Intel Atom D2500 display problems

I do need some help here: I recently purchase the Sherline CNC machine shop package which came shipped with its own computer, all I needed to do was add a monitor - A HP Pavilion xi23 should do the job!

On the initial boot-up the screen resolution came up in 800 x 600, so I tried to change it to a higher resolution - now starts the saga - I can't. I like to think that I am computer savvy, so identified the board fitted and searched the internet for a solution, I then came across the Cedar View GMA3600 problems and lack of a driver for Linux, well here I am not too sure, as I think there maybe a driver for Ubuntu 12.04 (edzeame.wordpress.com/2012/11/21/ubuntu-...for-intel-cedarview/), but his will not work with Ubuntu 10.04 (I don't think).

I contacted Sherline and they assure me that this board works at a high screen resolution than I am able to achieve, also it does appear that other people have managed to obtain the next resolution up, but no matter what I try I cannot get a high resolution. I have confirmed using another computer motherboard (borrowed) that Ubuntu and my monitor are happy to work together with 4 display resolutions, so the monitor is not a problem.

Currently Sherline are shipping me a replacement motherboard, but this is a D2550 which has the Cedar View GMA3650 built in, but suspect that I am likely to have similar problems.

Oh and I have updated the current BIOS to the latest standard.

Any thoughts, comments or views out there?

Try a different monitor. A lot of older and/or inexpencive monitors will not have their max screen resolution properly detected.

But it worked with a ASUS M5A78l-M LX3 motherboard running an AMD FX 8350 processor, with the same hard drive?

Still worth a try. I've had one that worked fine with an Intel board but the Asus one I switched to didn't like it one bit, switched monitors and all was fine. You never can tell with old stuff.

Hi

Distros tend to now try to auto detect monitor resolutions, which causes problems with older hardware.

I have a new Samsung 21" HD monitor, but unless I plug it in via the HDMI socket, its modes cannot be detected properly on a VGA cable and it defaults to a max 1024x768
An older monitor may well default to 800x600 or similar

This post in the Linux Tips gives some solutions
linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/forum/18-...256-linux-tips#30412

However I believe that the D2500 has the same closed source driver as the D2800 and you may well have to run it with the vesa driver or nouveau driver, which may leave the the max res restricted

If you fetch the source for the driver which started to ship with 12.04, you should be able to compile that for 10.04, but that may be well beyond your comfort level
EDIT (appears the kernel module is only in > 3.xx kernels so that does not look possible - you may be stuck with the nouveau driver and manually setting modelines to get a reasonable resolution)

regards

Thanks ArcEye,

The HP Pavilion is still on sale in the stores and on Amazon, it maybe last years model but I thought that it would be compatible with the D2500 which in itself is an old board. I did try with a couple of ancient monitors but they all defaulted to 800x600 as well. I did not include this info as I suspected that they would be unlikely to be detected.

The D2500 has exactly the same graphics chip as the D2800, however I have followed the link you gave and got the following:

$ cvt 1280 1024 60 (60Hz is good, command produced the same output)
# 1280x1024 59.89 Hz (CVT 1.31M4) hsync: 63.67 kHz; pclk: 109.00 MHz
Modeline "1280x1024_60.00" 109.00 1280 1368 1496 1712 1024 1027 1034 1063 -hsync +vsync

$ xrandr --newmode "1280x1024_60.00"

Results in the xrandr parameter list, indicating the command was not successful. i tried it with and without parentheses with the same result

$ xrandr --addmode VGA1 1280x1024_60.00

xrandr: cannot find output "VGA1" which confirms the --newmode command was not successful.

Can you let me have some details on the nouveau or vesa drivers please.

I have not done a source compile on Linux since Redhat days and I have not checked that all the necessary files are in the right place yet, a bit rusty I guess.

Oh as a last aside, I can remotely log-on via ethernet without a monitor connected, but I still cannot set anything other than 600x800 max res!

Regards

EDIT The line $ xrandr --newmode "1280x1024_60.00" should have read

$ xrandr --newmode "1280x1024_60.00" 109.00 1280 1368 1496 1712 1024 1027 1034 1063 -hsync +vsync

Hi

You need to run xrandr without any options and see what your display is

For instance on this machine it produces

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 509mm x 286mm
1920x1080 60.0*+ 50.0 25.0 30.0
1600x1200 60.0
1680x1050 59.9
1680x945 60.0
1400x1050 59.9
1600x900 60.0
1280x1024 75.0 60.0
1440x900 75.0 59.9
1280x960 60.0
1366x768 60.0
1360x768 60.0
1280x800 74.9 59.9
1152x864 75.0
1280x768 74.9 60.0
1280x720 50.0 60.0
1024x768 75.1 70.1 60.0
1024x576 60.0
832x624 74.6
800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
720x576 50.0
848x480 60.0
720x480 59.9
640x480 72.8 75.0 66.7 60.0
720x400 70.1
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

You can see that only HDMI1 is shown as connected, so that is the one that needs to be used for the display address

VGA1 is just the most common base address for a basic monitor.
The problem is VGA1 will always be there even if it is not enabled, so you will not get an error assigning modes to it, until you try to use them

See wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xrandr

regards

Can you let me have some details on the nouveau or vesa drivers please.

The packages are xorg-xserver-video-vesa and xorg-xserver-video-nouveau
You can download them via the synaptic package manager to see what will be installed and what removed, for safety

They are these basic open source general purpose drivers, nouveau is the newer one replacing vesa
They don't do 3D and you may need the software openGL libraries to get that to work, but they work pretty much with everything.
(wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Troubl...oting#Display_Issues)

In the longer term your problems may be solved when the next version of Linuxcnc is released.
It will run on the later kernels, certainly runs on Ubuntu 12.04 and 12.10, albeit you may still have to specifically build the cedarview driver since the Ubuntu one will be built against one of their stock kernels not a realtime one

regards

Hi

Running xrandr
$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 640 x 480, current 800 x 600, maximum 800 x 600
default connected 800x600+0+0 0mm x 0mm
800x600 61.0*
640x480 60.0
$

This tends to suggest that the VGA port has not been detected, and as the motherboard only has a single PCI slot I cannot go down the optimal route of trying a HDMI display.

I will have a look at the nouveau link you have provided

Thanks